My Baby Was Bamboozled!

It sure gets dark fast in the country.

I was without The Pony this evening, him having a previous engagement, accompanied by Hick. I didn't leave school until 4:30. There was barely a glow in the sky as I stepped in front of T-Hoe at the bottom of Mailbox Condo Hill to fetch the mail from EmBee's mouth. It's pretty dark in the woods after dark, you know, what with those trees (some still bearing dead rustling leaves) leaning over you.

Lucky for me, our homestead sits upon a hill. Lucky right after darkness has fallen down by the mailboxes, but not so lucky when I try to get back home after a snowstorm. Anyhoo...it was light enough see the vague outline of Hick's recent driveway doings (more on that another day) as I rolled T-Hoe towards the garage. And light enough to see the frolicking of my sweet, sweet Juno when she heard the garage door go up.

I flipped on the Christmas lights that have been attached to our soffits since The Pony was a pup. That gave me enough light to get up the steps to the porch. But first, I had to greet my sweet, sweet Juno. She stood still and put her nose against my neck. I was the first one home, you know. Not that she wanted anybody else. But she kind of looks for them, too. Just to make sure her whole pack is inside at the end of the day. And to hope for a run in front of Hick's Gator when he feeds the livestock.

After our lovefest had petered out, I asked my sweet, sweet Juno if she wanted a treat. YES! YES! She DID! She danced around, snuffling, feinting left and right until I put a fistful of cat kibble down on the porch in front of her. She put her head down to eat as poor dumb Ann ceased her incessant baying from the front of the house and rounded the stair railing. I gave her a handful as well, and wiped my kibble hand on her coarse black German shepherdish fur.

AND JUNO TOOK OFF FOR THE FRONT PORCH! WITHOUT EATING HER CAT KIBBLE!

Such a curious incident of the sweet, sweet Juno in the eveningtime! She NEVER abandons her cat kibble. She lives for that stuff. Yet off she ran, from whence Ann had come. Well. Ain't that a fine how-do-you-do after saying how do you do? All that greeting with no kibble-eating. Something surely had to be amiss.

I knew Timmy didn't fall down a well. Timmy is the grown-up dude who lives across the way who may or may not have stolen my favorite cat, Snuggles, whose likeness is the masthead of this blog. And who may or may not be living with his mummified mommy, who has not been seen for years, even when Timmy calls a cab to take him to the store.

I knew Hick was not home yet. So my sweet, sweet Juno could not be running around to join his Gator procession to the Sword Shack/Fishing Lair/Little Barbershop of Horrors village.

I didn't know WHAT had gotten into my sweet, sweet Juno. So unlike her to leave her cat kibble behind. Maybe a package had been left on the front porch. Perhaps the deliverer had caught a foot in the front steps and needed help. I followed my sweet baby to the front porch, even though I was laden with my own school bag and purse and pre-Christmas junk mail.

Nothing.

No package. No body. Nobody. Nothing. Only my sweet, sweet Juno barking her fool head off. She turned to see that I had followed her, then sprinted back to her pile of cat kibble. Which had just been licked clean down to the porch wood by poor dumb Ann.

I cry shenanigans! Poor dumb Ann is like an idiot savant. A regular Tom Sawyeress. A Hound of the Mensavilles. She must have tricked my sweet, sweet Juno into investigating elsewhere, after lagging on the front porch barking until our lovefest was over.

Poor Juno. I'll bet she felt like I did, every time my tweenage sister the future ex-mayor's wife called me into the living room to tell me a secret, then clapped her hands together and screamed to Mom that I had slapped her.